villages

a colleague of mine, gabi, has taken me on a couple of day trips around the county we live in. she has shown me cool villages and random sights that i wouldn't have otherwise known about. plus, she borrowed her dad's car so we didn't have to take trains!

here's gabi (she was the main photographer, so we won't see much of her in this post)here i am with french teacher anikó - we ate lunch in an italian restaurant in debrecen. it's was the best italian food i've had in hungary, that's for sure. made fresh in front of our very eyes! pasta, pizza, salads (with lettuce!), soups, and desserts. yum, yum, yum!

there was an old wooden bell tower in one of the places we visited. here it is from the front...

there is this a [whatever instrument] player statue and a guy playing a guitar.

we were there for a little while and soon we happened upon this wedding

gabi and i climbed some VERY steep and rickety old stairs to the top of the belfry (does that mean bell tower?) because there was an amazing view (and a bell) up there. anikó declined as she is afraid of heights.

the bell

the view (well, one side)

another view with gabi


the church attached to the bell tower

us chatting in the church

prayer time

gitározunk :)
(we are playing guitar)

in one of the villages, máriapócs, there is a church which houses a "weeping mary." it's a painting that wept like 300 years ago, was sold to someone in vienna, but several copies were made of it first, and a copy was returned to máriapócs and later the copy wept too. anyway, it hasn't wept since 1906 so it's due for a cry-fest, no? but, we got there only to find that the church is under construction and the weeper has been temporarily moved. whatev... we took this picture by the gift shop - which was closed.

some church

ooh, this little fun place called "your bell" was interesting to me 'cause they have festivals and dancing and hungarian events there all the time, like the traditional stuff. nice. cool buildings, old-hungary feeling

this anikó and i don't really hang out much, but i do like her a lot. her english is better than my hungarian, but we still speak in both languages. she even taught me a few words in french!
it's humbling that everyone here knows at least two languages (gabi knows 4!). it motivates me to a) speak english well b) learn hungarian c) not complain about learning hungarian

this is a fake lake - haha, well, it's manmade

we met some horses there

and the horse guys who basically keep old hungary alive with their clothes

here i am with the... oh, what's he called... uh, the cowboy, for lack of a better word

she totally pushed me but i hammed it up a bit

in one of our stops there was an insane asylum. niiiiice. you know i learned that word in hungarian, i simply had to!
here is the crazy house (it's the yellow building)

a couple weeks ago we went with some spanish ladies gabi knows to see some other villages. that was especially fun because there were three different mother tongues in the car. we spoke in english with some random hungarian and spanish mixed in. being silly comes across well in any language, though. that's really cool.

here they are (sadly i can't remember their names, but they were good fun company)

even xander got to come on that excursionthis is the first stop we made. that church was built in the 13th century.

we went on a sunday and there was a service going on, so we waited outside until it finished. then we saw some sweet old ladies walking home together.
we went in the church. the ceiling was low but ornate. i wouldn't mind sitting in there listening to a sermon for an hour or so. cozy.
here is its bell tower. very old. very wooden. very hungarian.
we found some kids playing around outside and invited them to join in on our photo-op.

back in the car and on the way to... somwhere esle. haha. and there was, you guessed it, a church there!some tour guide lady came and told us about the church. in a nutshell i remember this: it was built in the 14th century, was run by one denomination who painted it all pretty with murals of people, then later it was taken over/bought? by another denomination who painted over the murals with silly flower patterns. later another denomination (or perhaps the original denomination) got the church and held services there. one day they washed the walls and the flower pattern came off, revealing the original murals. also, the first denomination kept its important papers concerning the church in a box on the ceiling for safekeeping.

see the flowers?
here is the pulpit. i liked it because i can understand everything it says:
"i am the way, the truth, and the life"

here you can see the flowers and the murals underneath
murals are busting through! it was really cool in real life.
ok, then we went to another place that had a unique cemetery. something like 150 years ago the first people to be buried there wanted their graves to be boats for some reason. it started a tradition/trend and now there is a whole big cemetery with boat headstones.
boats with wreaths
boats boats everywhere... hungary is landlocked.... so what...
a cute little yard/garden on the way back to the car
i like the wagon

we stopped near a watermill and had a picnic for lunch. it was a beautiful day with fun-loving company. no stress, just life. good stuff.

here's the mill
this is me